globalvoicesonlinefandomcom-20200214-history
WeblogWorkshop
Global Voices members are often asked to give workshops introducing people to weblogging. This page is intended as a group resource for anyone giving an introduction to weblogs. Please feel free to weigh in with your suggested links and lessons. Obviously, this isn't the only guide online to Weblogging. Wikibooks has an excellent Blogging Intro, and dozens of other introductions exist. This one is designed to be useful for teaching about bridgeblogging and may, therefore, have certain features others lack. What's a Weblog? Weblogs can be anything from a personal diary to a complicated website edited by multiple authors. The vast majority of weblogs resemble journals - they're written by one person, usually for an audience of family or friends. But weblogs can resemble newspaper opinion columns or magazines on specialty subjects. Some of these weblogs are read by hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. There are certain features common to most weblogs: * Entries listed in reverse-chronological order, most recent posts at the top * A space for users to comment on the author's posts * Archives of past entries, sometimes organized via a calendar * Information on the author(s) of the weblog * Links to other sites, sometimes called a "blogroll" * Syndication information, which is information that allows readers to "subscribe" to a weblog. Examples of different kinds of weblogs Personal weblogs "Dear Raed" - Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger molkj- former Prime Minister of Sweden Organizational Weblogs The Berkman Center News Weblogs Boing Boing Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web (Alternative) Journalism Weblogs Dan Gillmor Geekpress Community Journalism Greensboro.com OhMyNews Out2.comisn't exactly a blog, but it is an attempt to have user-generated local content in a newspaper format. The 'front page' tends to be national news, but the 'local' news is contributed by the users themselves (try the Palm Beach, Fl. edition for an active example] Interest Weblogs Football blog O'Reilly's technical blog WiFi News Political Weblogs Instapundit, Glenn Reynold's conservative blog Talking Points Memo, Josh Micah Marshall's liberal blog Blog of US presidential candidate Howard Dean The Drudge Report Expert Weblogs *Larry Lessig - Professor Stanford Law School *Edward Felten - Professor Dept. of Computer Science Princeton University *Michael Froomkin - Professor University of Miami School of Law *Eben Moglen - Professor of Law; Legal History, Columbia Law School *Michael Geist - Professor at the University of Ottawa Joint Weblogs Metafilter Slashdot Political State Report NYC Bloggers WorldChanging Blogs Around the World The World as a Blog Census of blogs around the worldBlog census is dated 2003, sure these numbers have changed dramatically since this was published. Interney.net - Brazil's most popular blog Controverso - Blog Iranfilter - Blogs from Iran BlogAfrica - collection of African Weblogs Finding Interesting Weblogs You may be reading weblogs and not even know it - more and more webpages are using a weblog format to maintain their sites. Look for links that say "RSS", "Atom", or "XML" - these are links for the syndication feed for a site, a sure sign that a site is a weblog. Technorati's top 100 - the most popular blogs in the world Daypop - Blog Search Engine Eatonweb Blog Directory Technorati lets you check who's linking to who - especially useful to see who's linking to you or to your favorite sites. Blog census is dated 2003, sure these numbers have changed dramatically since this was published. {sorry, this was meant to go on previous paragraph} Getting Your Own Weblog There are literally hundreds of different ways to start a weblog. All involve finding a webserver where your blog will live. If you're just starting, you're probably looking for a weblog hosting service. Some things to consider in choosing a weblogging service: *Is it free, or am I paying to use it? *Does the service allow other users to comment on my blog? *Does the service support RSS to allow people to subscribe to my blog? Some hosted services Blogger. A free service provided by Google. Supports Atom, not RSS, so it's hard for people to subscribe to blogs. Doesn't support comments very well. Doesn't offer the opportunity to organize your posts in categories. Doesn't allow you to "ping" other blogs or issue trackback urls. Typepad For-pay service using the Moveable Type engine. Supports RSS, comments, costs about $5 a month. LiveJournal Free site, very popular for personal journals. Supports comments and subscriptions, but only within the livejournal community - not good for blogs you want read outside of LiveJournal. Blogsome Free, full-featured server, using WordPress. Supports RSS, comments. Wordpress.com Hosted Wordpress solution from the makers of the software. Running your own server If you're technically savvy or running a website for a large organization, you may want to run your own weblog server. Almost all blog servers require you to be running a webserver (usually Apache) and a SQL database of some sort. (If you got lost on that last sentence, you probably aren't ready to run your own server.) Some popular blog servers include: Moveable Type. Closed source, but very powerful and popular. WordPress Powerful, database-driven open source weblog server. Blosxom. Pronounced "blossom", an elegant and simple open source blogserver. Starting a weblog with Blogsome On Blogsome's home page, pick a name for your blog. Your blog address will be "http://thenameyoupick.blogsome.com". On the next page, Blogsome will ask you for an email address (twice) and for a title for your blog. It will also ask you if your blog is for testing purposes - if you're going to keep this blog, don't check that box. Do check the box below it, which asks if you've agreed to the terms of service. Blogsome will send you a username and password and give you a link to your new blog. You'll need that username and password to gain access to the Blogsome server and start making entries. When you log in, Blogsome will take you to the "new entry" page. To post an entry to your blog, type in the "title" and "post" fields, then click the "publish" button. You've just published your first post! The "links" button will allow you to manage a blogroll, adding weblogs you enjoy looking at to your page. The "users" tab allows you to add additional users to your weblog, letting them post as well. After you start a weblog... Encourage people to read and comment on your weblog. You might send an email to friends letting them know about the blog, or add the address of your blog to an email signature. There are three basic ways to increase your blog's popularity: *Comment on other people's blogs *Link to other people's blogs *Register with blog directories. *Add email or blog subscription badges to your site as well as feed badges. Examples of the former are Feedblitz.com or Bloglines.com. Technorati and Blogdex help you keep track of who's linking to your blog. Aggregators - a better way to read blogs People who read a lot of weblogs usually don't read them by loading each web page individually. They use "aggregators", which are tools that automatically download new entries from weblogs and put them in the same place. There are two kinds of aggregators, standalone and online aggregators. Online aggregators are websites that allow you to register a set of weblogs and read them on a single webpage. Standalone aggregators are pieces of software that allow you to read a set of weblogs on your computer. Popular standalone aggregators include Amphetadesk, which is open source and runs on all major platforms, and NetNewsWire, a closed source, but very elegant Mac-only aggregator. Online aggregators include Bloglines, a free aggregator which also lets you publish blogrolls, and Blogstreet, a very powerful service which allows you to read blogs through mobile phones or by email. A Bloglines tutorial Bloglines includes a search engine that can find either blog entries or other blog RSS feeds. There is a free open-source widget for Wordpress bloggers, called blinesAgg, that efficiently updates a blogroll automatically using Bloglines search results. Setting up a Bloglines aggregator Create an account. Log in. Under "account", set a username, and make your blog and blogroll publicly accessible. This lets you set up an aggregator that's publicly visible.